Cargo Cult - Who is John Frum? He is known to us by many names, this Visitor from Elsewhere, dispenser of endless abundance and wielder of mysterious technologies: John Frum, Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, "Bob." His cargo is splendid, his generosity boundless, his motives beyond our understanding. But across the ages and around the world, the stories all agree: one day he will return, bearing great gifts. Our theme this year asks three related questions; who is John Frum, where is he really from, and where, on spaceship Earth, are we all going?

I don't care if I get kicked off again like last year BUT someone has to say something - is anyone else getting tired of all the stick-up-the rear people who have issues with nudity? Where did BM begin? Why did we relocate to Pershing Co i.e. in the middle of nowhere?

Nothing makes a better statement than the naked body - even with all it's imperfections. When people say a picture speaks a thousand words how can you describe being naked?

As much as you may think so, Naked and Free aren't the same thing. Just because you think so doesn't mean other people do. Nothing is Mandatory. If you want to troll pick something a little more entertaining, not the run of the mill trolls of Nudity.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

I'd be for that but my thinking is, if you're disrobing at the gate, you're not technically or geographically inside the confines of BRC. A hard up LEO might pop you for indecent exposure. Public nudity. etc. More power to those who might do so.

My cats are cuter than your grandkids!

"Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem." Ronald Reagan

Thecatman wrote:I'd be for that but my thinking is, if you're disrobing at the gate, you're not technically or geographically inside the confines of BRC. A hard up LEO might pop you for indecent exposure. Public nudity. etc. More power to those who might do so.

I speak for pretty much every one at gate, WAIT TILL GREETERS TO GET NAKED...

Gate takes care of the business of getting everyone with tickets (and correct EA credentials) into BRC as fast as possible.

You are not really in BRC till you reach Greeters. No Greeter will give you grief for being naked. (Annoy gate and you could end up in D-Lot.)

Love Rice

Roach: "I feel like in this day and age, every girl should know how to build a flamethrower."

The security-geek part of me sees this as a clever hack. Hide stowaways with tickets. If they find you with ticket in mouth, everybody laughs and in you go. If they don't find you, or more likely just don't search (search is only done to a random selection of cars at peak time) you get in with an unused ticket, which you can then sell at a high price and take to will call.

I'm not saying anybody is doing that scam, and I think that if they started finding lots of people hiding with tickets they would change the policy of laughing, and treat it like a sneak-in with serious consequences.

I've never been fond of the idea that everybody's first taste of our bastion of liberty is a multi-hour wait and a search of your vehicle. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge the number of people caught sneaking in is quite few, a number far below that which any normal business would just discount as "shrinkage." Particularly with the newer policies -- no tickets for sale at gate, get caught sneaking somebody in and everybody goes home with no tickets after months of preparation -- very little searching is necessary. (And indeed, in this line, searching is randomized at peak times.) It's said the search is also there to spot guns, fireworks, plants, feathers etc. if they are just lying around, which makes it more of an education effort, as anybody trying deliberately to smuggle them in would not be deterred.

I would personally prefer it if, like almost every other business in the world, BM had reduced security, accepted a certain amount of shrinkage, and passed the cost of that along to all customers. And then used the flexibility this grants you to vastly speed up the gate. Then you can get naked for the greeters.

I would personally prefer it if, like almost every other business in the world, BM had reduced security, accepted a certain amount of shrinkage, and passed the cost of that along to all customers

why is that every time i read your posts i feel "dirty"...

Because I chose those words deliberately for the irony. Inside the gate, we live a different life with different economics. But outside and at the gate, it's about tickets, money, searches and the rest of the default world. When it comes to selling tickets, it's filthy lucre all the way, and we are customers until we get inside. Worse, actually -- as we approach gate we're treated like potential cheats. The rules of business -- and customer satisfaction -- should not be ignored in the name of pretending not to be a business. The effort to pretend otherwise got things like a ticket lottery.

Captain Goddammit wrote:Many years ago, I knew of a girl who hid in an RV closet so Gate would find her... she was naked, with a Burning Man ticket clenched in her teeth. It seems that went over just fine!

Haha that's rad! It would've been even cooler if she had it clenched somewhere else..

I would not recommend that. Plonking/killfile is not for people who disagree with you. It's for people who insist on discussing the other person rather than discussing their ideas. If you're talking to a newbie, it may be worthwhile educating them, but if somebody's been on the net for a long time and they still have an ad hominem style online, it's best for all to just edit them out if they do it more than once. Experience shows they are unlikely to learn.

Fire_Moose wrote:Unless Gate asks you to. Then its best to follow orders.

I wish someone from Gate would ask to see me naked. There's just something about a man in dusty-ass boots and all black...meow.

Tell you what. All of us GP&E eplayans could work the same shift, same lane. Then you come into that lane during that shift with all the other smexy eplayans, and we'll go full on TSA with y'all. Everyone gets to live out that fantasy, and be marry. As long as it's no where close to peak time. Otherwise it's "do you have the things you shouldn't have," and "may I see your ticket" time.

Personally I've had a few naked people sleeping under the covers in RVs come up. But to me all I care about is if they have a ticket or not. Doesn't phase me one way or the other if someone is naked. Same thing inside the city. However if Burning Man turned into a nudist event I wouldn't come, since that's not my cup of tea.

Fire_Moose wrote:Unless Gate asks you to. Then its best to follow orders.

I wish someone from Gate would ask to see me naked. There's just something about a man in dusty-ass boots and all black...meow.

Tell you what. All of us GP&E eplayans could work the same shift, same lane. Then you come into that lane during that shift with all the other smexy eplayans, and we'll go full on TSA with y'all. Everyone gets to live out that fantasy, and be marry. As long as it's no where close to peak time. Otherwise it's "do you have the things you shouldn't have," and "may I see your ticket" time.

Personally I've had a few naked people sleeping under the covers in RVs come up. But to me all I care about is if they have a ticket or not. Doesn't phase me one way or the other if someone is naked. Same thing inside the city. However if Burning Man turned into a nudist event I wouldn't come, since that's not my cup of tea.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.